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Monday, April 30, 2012

Under the new dispensation, the most noble thing one can be is a homosexual.

Unless, that is, one is a Republican, and especially an anti-Communist, in which case one should be burned at the stake. So, hating homosexuals is not only to be tolerated, but to be celebrated, as long as they are the right kind of homosexuals.

This sort of thing is why I maintain that multiculturalism has no principles, only (momentary) loyalties and expediency.

Richard Nixon was a liberal Republican, who was to the left of Jack Kennedy on race and economics. But while Kennedy was every bit the hardline anti-Communist Nixon was, Kennedy was a Democrat. Besides, the latter’s assassination by the Communist Lee Harvey Oswald made the issue of Kennedy’s anti-Communism moot, and leftists—particularly Communists, like Oliver Stone—were then able to reconstruct a usable JFK, in which Kennedy was a raging leftist who was killed by a fascist conspiracy so immense.

But in addition being a Republican, the reason the Left was obsessed with destroying Nixon was that he was the man who brought traitor and Communist spy Alger Hiss to justice. The statute of limitations made it impossible to prosecute Hiss for treason, but Nixon got him convicted and imprisoned for perjury. Watergate was payback for that.

J. Edgar Hoover was also a conservative anti-Communist (as was almost half the country, while most of the rest of the country consisted of anti-Communist Democrats), and so the Hoover Hoax, consisting of fraudulent reports that he was a homosexual and transvestite, was fabricated as a form of historical revenge. Now the leftist rapists of history have moved on to Nixon. Eventually, they’ll get to Rudy Giuliani.

You don’t even have to have successfully prosecuted Communist traitors anymore, to earn eternal damnation from the Left. You just have to disagree with them… on anything.

A new book by an ex-White House reporter claims that President Richard Nixon was a mobbed-up drunk who beat the First Lady and may have had a decades-long gay affair with a shady Miami-area businessman.

In the shocking new biography "Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President," former United Press International Washington bureau chief Don Fulsom writes that Tricky Dick had mob ties for more than 20 years before he was elected in 1968 and lusted after his best pal, dashing Cuban-American playboy Charles (Bebe) Rebozo.

Nixon and Rebozo, who the feds believe laundered money for mob kingpins in Florida and Cuba, swam, sunbathed and dined together during guys-only vacations in exclusive Key Biscayne, Fla., and were once spotted [by whom?] holding hands under the table during a dinner with K Street power brokers, according to a report on the book in the Daily Mail.

Another Washington reporter told Fulsom that he once spotted a boozy Nixon nuzzling Rebozo "the way you'd cuddle your senior prom date."

The pair's friendship was no secret to Washington insiders, and the book claims that there were whispers that the two were more than just pals up until Nixon's death in 1994. (Rebozo was by his side. He died four years later.)

[N.S.: Nixon and Rebozo’s friendship was no secret to the public. But notice how Daily News operative Philip Caulfield equivocates on the meaning of “friendship.” After twice claiming they were gay, Caulfield speaks of the pair’s “friendship.” The whole world knew that Nixon and Rebozo were best friends—heck, I knew about it at the age of 10 or 11—so Caulfield has to be meaning something very different than “friendship.” In the following sentence, he speaks of “whispers,” which is really repetitious, at this point.]

White House aides at the time said Rebozo was nothing more than "the guy who mixed the martinis" and showed the notoriously stuffy Nixon how to hobnob, the Mail said.

The new book also charges that Nixon guzzled bathtubs of booze [That’s hardly news]— earning the name "Our Drunk" from his own staff — and abused First Lady Pat Nixon.

Fulsom writes that an aide had to coach Nixon on how to kiss Mrs. Nixon so that they'd come across as a loving couple, the Mail said.

[He means in public, for staged kisses. Like most people those days, the Nixons did not kiss in public. Heck, The Boss and I don’t kiss in public, and we live in a neighborhood where you never see married couples doing that!]

But behind closed doors, Nixon called his wife a “f------ b----” and often beat her before, during and after his presidency, the book claims.

[Behind closed doors, husbands and wives call each other many unendearing names. The claims as to Richard Nixon beating his wife are almost certainly hearsay and exaggeration, if not outright lies. Are Fulsom and Caulfield only writing for gays here, or for people who grew up in broken homes?]

Macmillan, the book's publisher, said that "Nixon's Darkest Secrets" is based on Fulsom's reporting during the Nixon administration, along with interviews with members of Congress, former White House staffers and others from the 37th President's inner circle.

He also covered the Johnson, Ford, Reagan and Clinton presidencies and teaches a course on the Watergate scandal at American University.

‘I never quite got over Richard Nixon,’’ writes Don Fulsom, a former United Press International Washington bureau chief, at the beginning of “Nixon’s Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America’s Most Troubled President.’’ This is one of the few indisputable assertions in what is otherwise, and easily, the most virulently hateful book about the 37th president ever written - and the worst. The latter distinction is no mere by-product of the former, but earned in its own right, by virtue of the author’s stunted and smarmy prose, and research that is at once highly selective and woefully sloppy.

There is no confirmed villainy or allegation of it, no unsubstantiated rumor or outright falsehood, no scrap of data damaging to Nixon, who resigned the presidency in 1974 and died two decades later, that Fulsom does not stoop to collect in this exhausting catalog. It hardly requires that one be an apologist for Nixon to be take [sic] aback by the unrelentingly negative - and often shamefully insinuative - tone of this book.

Fulsom begins by telling us that it was he, not Woodward and Bernstein, who first discovered that the Watergate burglars were working for the Nixon reelection campaign, a feat for which Fulsom never received due credit. From there we are treated, in bite-size chapters, to various Bad Nixons: Nixon the wife-beater; Nixon the racist; Nixon the homophobe, who was also Nixon the secret gay lover of longtime friend Charles “Bebe’’ Rebozo; Nixon the mastermind of assassinations; Nixon the mob puppet; Nixon the Teamster puppet; Nixon the puppet of Howard Hughes; and so on.

Attempting to document all this, Fulsom selectively cites a broad array of articles, books, tapes, and documents; but none of the papers or tapes appears to have been released pursuant to his own requests, and anyone well acquainted with the massive literature of the Nixon presidency will see - there is no other word for it - the trickery at work. One tip-off is Fulsom’s heavy reliance, in virtually every paragraph, on slippery phraseology that allows him to imply connections between people or to float sinister allegations without substantiating evidence: “Mob-linked,’’ “Mob ties,’’ “associate,’’ “organized crime connections,’’ “heavily involved with,’’ “a number of shady financial entanglements,’’ “reportedly,’’ “reputedly.’’

People and events parade by without definition or context. And in Fulsom’s footnotes, all sources are equally valid: Seymour Hersh and Stanley Kutler = Anthony Summers = Kitty Kelley = a “psycho-historian’’ who never met Nixon = the Oakland Tribune = Hollywoodnews.com. Only a handful of original interviews appear to have been conducted for this book, all with fellow reporters, one of whom provided a blurb, and all to substantiate a claim that Nixon and Rebozo once held hands.

One could go on and on. Fulsom is the only chronicler of the Nixon presidency (1969-74) to spend more time on Lee Harvey Oswald than on Dwight D. Eisenhower, the only one to traffic so unapologetically in “widespread rumors,’’ and the only one to start off sentences with phrases such as “I’ll bet. . .’’

Even peripheral asides, such as the author’s assertions that Nixon “knew [Watergate conspirator E. Howard] Hunt’s background intimately,’’ or that “Dean’s photographic memory of events was totally confirmed’’ by the release of Nixon’s tapes, warrant correction. On the Watergate tapes, Nixon spoke in only the vaguest terms about Hunt and his background; the president evidenced enormous difficulty keeping the various players in the scandal, most of them a generation his junior, straight in his own mind. And Fulsom appears unaware of the Watergate special prosecutors’ own judgments regarding the celebrated recall of Dean, about whom they drafted, in March 1974, a memorandum titled: “Material Discrepancies Between the Senate Select Committee Testimony of John Dean and the Tapes of Dean’s Meetings With the President.’’

Absent from “Nixon’s Darkest Secrets’’ is Nixon, the man - and the Nixon presidency.

Readers will find here no nuanced consideration of a human soul, “troubled’’ or otherwise (more so than Kennedy? Or Lyndon Johnson? Or Lincoln?); no diplomatic opening to China or rescue of Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War; no creation of the Environmental Protection Agency or desegregation of the Southern school system. Four decades after Watergate first burst into the front pages, it would appear Nixon’s darkest secret was that he was nowhere near as bad as his most virulent detractors allege. No one ever is.

The law originally was designed to stop the Jim Crow-era lynching of black men. But in recent years, South Carolina's lynching law mainly had targeted African-American gang members.By Patrik JonssonJanuary 12, 2010Christian Science Monitor

The South Carolina Sentencing Reform Commission voted Monday to rename the state's lynching law 'assault and battery by a mob' and to soften consequences for situations where no one was killed or seriously injured in an attack by two or more people on a single victim.

In what’s being seen as an attempt at redemption by a state touched by recent political embarrassment, a panel of South Carolina lawmakers has voted to change the state’s lynching law.

Why? Ostensibly because prosecutors had abused it to put bar-fight participants in prison for up to 20 years. But the real issue ran even deeper, a key lawmaker acknowledges: For decades, the law has been used to address African-American gang activity, with over half of all lynching charges and convictions being levied against blacks.

The South Carolina Sentencing Reform Commission voted Monday to rename the law “assault and battery by a mob” and to soften consequences for situations in which no one was killed or seriously injured in an attack by two or more people on a single victim.

The emotional and historical power of the word “lynching” – especially in the Deep South, where the majority of lynchings happened – has long been seen by critics as especially cruel when applied to instances in which black men are arrested.

'Lynching is a particular type of crime'

“Lynching is a particular type of crime that has been recognized socially and by the state as having certain distinct attributes, and so the [South Carolina lynching law] is a corruption not only of the idea of what a lynching is, but also the historical memory of what a lynching is,” says [anti-white] University of North Carolina history Prof. Fitzhugh Brundage, who has written on black historical memory in the South since the Civil War.

[Brundage is a white supporter of black supremacy.]

“If three juveniles beating on another juvenile who’s a member of another school gang is considered a lynching, then lynching is absolutely pervasive in America,” he adds.

The South Carolina lynching law has been used to prosecute both blacks and whites, but came under fire in 2003 when the Associated Press reported that it was being frequently used and that 69 percent of its targets were young black men, and 67 percent of those convicted for lynching were black.

[That would likely be because the overwhelming majority of said crimes are committed by blacks.]

Critics point out that Deep South states were never so aggressive in pursuing lynching charges when blacks in the South feared actual mob killings in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Lynching law a tool to fight gang crime?

For law enforcement agencies, however, the law had become an effective tool to fight urban gang crime. Former Charleston, S.C., police chief Reuben Greenberg, the city’s first black chief, told the AP that he had used it many times, primarily to control gang problems in the old port city.

Trey Walker, a spokesman for state Attorney General Henry McMaster, told the AP in 2003 that since there’s no mention of race in the statue, “The law is colorblind.”

But that explanation didn’t ring true with the Sentencing Reform Commission, whose changes still have to be approved by the legislature.

“It was brought to our attention that, ‘Look, this name has a negative connotation and people are being charged with something that really has nothing to do with what people perceive to be lynching,’ “ says Rep. Murrell Smith, the Republican chairman of the reform commission.

[That’s because of the successful propaganda by the NAACP, and other black supremacist organizations and figures.]

The law originally was designed to stop the Jim Crow-era lynching of black men. But in recent years, South Carolina's lynching law mainly had targeted African-American gang members.

[The law didn’t target anyone; laws can’t do that. But if black gang members had a problem with the law, the solution was obvious: Stop lynching people!]

Passed in 1951 after the brutal mob killing of taxi driver Willie Earle, who was dragged out of a county jail in Greenville, S.C., and murdered, the law was both a political response and, in all likelihood, a way to preempt what many knew what would eventually come – the 1968 federal antilynching [sic] law.

While the law’s modern application may be “grotesque,” as Professor Brundage puts it, the fact is that South Carolina was the one Deep South state to actually fight back against lynchings during the years of the brutal practice.

Other states had many more lynchings

To be sure, iSouth Carolina Gov. Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman, a Democrat, provided the modern archetype of the angry and racist white man, calling his political opponents “white Negroes,” chastising the elite, and defending mob justice. But Georgia, Texas, and Mississippi saw many more lynchings than did the Palmetto State. And while the first lynching conviction came in Georgia in the early 20th century, it involved a white man convicted of hanging another white man. South Carolina prosecutors became the first ones in the South to use an anti-ynching law in the mid-1920s to give redress to the family of a black man lynched while county authorities looked the other way.

Still, in the wake of the long-running controversy over the Confederate flag on the state capitol grounds, Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” outburst during President Obama’s healthcare speech to Congress, and Gov. Mark Sanford’s brush with impeachment over an affair with a woman in Argentina, some commentators see in the changes to the lynching law a growing sensitivity among lawmakers over the state’s national profile and reputation.

“South Carolina has been embarrassed by a series of racially tinged scandals [like what?], and to look at South Carolina as a place where they’re prosecuting African-Americans for lynching of all things, how’s that going to look and play in terms of national politics and national PR?” says Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a political analyst and the author of the upcoming book “How Obama Governed: The year of crisis and challenge.”

“It seems that South Carolina is beginning to come to grips and wrestle with this black eye and realize that this is an embarrassing law,” he says.

School kids in Germany grow up learning about the Nazis in school. Those who “learn” about America doubtless learn about the white supremacists and neo-Nazis that hide under every black’s bed. Indeed, the slick, popular socialist news magazine, Der Spiegel (The Mirror), which I used to read every week in West Germany, did a story on the topic just last May, following the murder of Neo-Nazi Jeff Hall, by his 10-year-old son: “Neo-Nazis in the USA: Swastikas and Stars and Stripes” (“Neonazis in den USAHakenkreuz und Sternenbanner”). The “report” was based mostly on SPLC and ADL fundraising letters. Regurgitating SPLC propaganda, “reporter” Marc Pitzke's “story” informed readers that the neo-Nazi movement in America is splittered yet ubiquitous, with more chapters than ever.

It is now 17 days since the terrible attack, yet no “suspects” have surfaced. Surprise, surprise!

To the high school exchange authorities over in D-land: We don’t need to import any more Tawanas; we have more than enough right here at home, thank you very much!

The Berthoud Police Department Wednesday released a composite sketch of a man suspected of participating in a hate crime committed against a black Berthoud High School foreign exchange student.

Police described the man as white with blonde hair and greenish eyes, standing between 6-feet to 6-foot-5. He was last seen wearing a black T-shirt featuring a band of white flames near his chest and likely has a tattoo.

Authorities believe the man was in the company of three other white males last Thursday when they allegedly accosted the 15-year-old high school junior from Germany. She was walking through Ellen Bunyan Bein park, located next to the Berthoud High School on Spartan Avenue, when four white men in their 20s blocked her path.

The foursome said things to the girl that were "very intimidating, very racial in nature," that scared her, said Berthoud Police Department Chief Glenn Johnson. One man cut the girl's forehead with a knife, causing her minor injuries.

There is no indication that the men knew the girl, and Johnson couldn't say where they were from. In the end, he said, they let her go, and were on their way.

The other men were described as two blonde haired males and a shorter, stocky male with dark hair.

The Berthoud Police Department is looking for the following suspect involvedin an assault that occurred on April 12, 2012:

Those who know the man, or those who have information about the incident, should contact the Berthoud Police Department at 970-532-2611.

There’s a political litmus test today for any non-black who gets caught in the machinery of the criminal justice system for anything involving a black, even if the non-black was a crime victim: He must prove himself not a “racist,” which is to say, pro-black and anti-white. Otherwise, he can forget about due process, or any other civil rights. I learned this at least as far back as 1993, as a crime victim.

The shootings occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the early hours of April 6, 2012—Good Friday. Jacob England (19) and Alvin Watts (32) entered a predominantly black neighborhood in a white pickup, and started shooting people. They shot 5 black people, 3 of whom died.

The Tulsa police soon discovered who the perpetrators were. They were arrested two days later, on Easter. They confessed and have been charged with three counts of murder in the first degree, two counts of shooting with intent to kill. Here is the police report....

Jake England’s defense attorney Clark Brewster is defending Jake. Well, that’s his job, right? But notice how he does it.

Trayvon Martin’s grieving parents, Tracy Martin, l, and Sybrina Fulton, c, immediately retained the services of lawyer Benjamin Crump, who was already notorious for his rampant ethical violations engineering race hoaxes, in the successful pursuit of fraud-based, multimillion-dollar settlements. As soon as the parents had Crump on their side, they quit their jobs, and in spite of the fact that they had no legal fees, due to Crump working on a contingency basis, they started “fundraising” for their “legal fees.” The law calls that wire fraud. The parents then became angry when their designated fall guy and cash cow, George Zimmerman, set uop a Web site to raise money for his defense.

Something else strange about this Trayvon case. Tray was visiting and staying at the home of the fiancé [girlfriend] of the father since he had been expelled from school for ten days.

The cops had the body in the morgue for three days before they called the father.

After Tray was killed the cops did not immediately tell the father or the fiancé was not on the scene when Tray did not come home or some of the kids Tray was with supposedly watching TV did not say something to someone? Tray did not have ID on his person and NO ONE from the home of the fiancé was at all interested as to WHY Tray did not make it home? And Dee Dee the girlfriend did not call anyone when the phone call with Tray was interrupted with a fight taking place or whatever it was?

NONE of this happened?

* * *

[N.S. The father, Tracy Martin (or hoax lawyer Benjamin Crump) made up the story about his son going out for a snack during half-time of the NBA All-Star Game, to make it seem as if he were a devoted dad, watching the game with his son, when in fact he was out on a date with his girlfriend, and the game hadn’t even begun yet, when Trayvon left the house.

Trymaine Lee, of AOL's Huffington Post: Sharpton contacted him, and he put the hoax script into play nationally on March 8.

Dee Dee I: Dee Dee the girlfriend insists that Trayvon’s cell phone ear piece must have fallen out when George Zimmerman shoved him, but she is only saying what Benjamin Crump coached her to say. And how could she possibly know that Zimmerman shoved Martin? We do know that Martin punched Zimmerman in the nose, breaking said organ, and jumped on top of him, punching him in the mouth, and repeatedly slamming Zimmerman’s head into the concrete, an attack which ended only when Zimmerman shot and killed Martin. Martin’s attack on Zimmerman was more than sufficiently violent to jar the earpiece loose.

Dee Dee II: Crump coached girlfriend to quote Trayvon as saying that he was terrified of this man following him. What we now know about NO_LIMIT_NIGGA is that that is the last thing he would have said. A 6’3” thug who nonchalantly takes swings at bus drivers, is a burglar, and who is about to try to murder a man does not tell his girlfriend that he is terrified of some six-inch shorter, non-black man following him. If anything, he would have bragged that he was about to take care of business, though not in quite those words.

And as you say, why did she not call 911? And why did she not immediately reach out to her dead boyfriend’s family, after hearing of his death? Crump’s story is that the father found Trayvon’s cell phone records three weeks later, and saw that the boy had been on the phone with Dee Dee. That means that Dee Dee, the grieving girlfriend, never contacted Trayvon’s family, and had to be contacted by them, three weeks later. That story is a lie, on one end or the other. Either she wasn’t the grieving girlfriend, or she contacted or was contacted by the family soon after Trayvon’s death. The father’s cell phone records/grieving girlfriend story has to be yet another lie, concocted by Benjamin Crump.

If this comes to trial, this trained seal of a girlfriend could not withstand a serious cross-examination.

We are a different kind of a personality. And sometimes it’s difficult for us to understand why we are subject, why we are subject [N.S.: Chief O’Connor repeated himself for effect] to this violence, and this hate, undeserved hate, because of what we do, and how we do it. A lot of things are under attack, not just law enforcement. I just think authority itself in the United States is under attack….

We make easy targets. We present ourselves in situations, you know, where there is a high probability of danger and criminal activity. So, by our ability and by our responses, we understand that we become victims.

We were once a protected class. There was an aura about law enforcement that we didn’t have to worry about it. That aura is gone. We are no longer a protected class. We are a targeted class of individuals.

And law enforcement, we conduct our business, we try to enforce the law. And sometimes, when we enforce the law, that’s considered disrespect by a lot of individuals. And the response for perceived disrespect is an aggressive response, it’s a violent response. And it’s what we suffer in the community.

Maryland Heights Police Chief Tom O’Connor, in video Part IV; Chief Tom O’Connor served in the USMC in the War in Vietnam. He’s been a cop since 1968.

Chief Tom O’Connor will never admit it, but everything he said in his interview was about race. The war on police is identical with the rise of black supremacy, better known as the civil rights movement. Black supremacy got an additional shot in the arm through the illegal election of the John Doe calling himself “Barack Obama.”

Black supremacist adults have for 50 years taught black children to assault and otherwise violate everything and everyone white, especially white authority figures. They are so evil that they can even rationalize the murder of black cops with, "They just work for the white man." Meanwhile, more and more black cops are telling black comminities, in code, "We're on your side, the side of black criminals, so don't shoot us." The message within the mixed message has had limited success in getting through.

But you don’t have to watch the whole thing. I can spell it out for you in one easy word:

O-B-A-M-A.

In case you still don’t get it, I’ll give you an executive summary:

The very existence of a black President has given black thugs socio-cultural carte blanche to go all in and all out against “da man,” namely, white cops. You know, “we’z takin over honkey,” or “this is a black world.”

ST. LOUIS, MO (KTVI) – The number of police officers killed in the line of duty is rising. Last year the number jumped 14 percent nationwide. Six died in Missouri, 2 in Illinois.

Our Fox 2 special report examines why this is happening. Criminals are not afraid to shoot and kill a police officer. The International Association of Police Chiefs says 85 percent of agencies nationwide have been forced to reduce their budgets and cut manpower and equipment. There were 58,000 police officers assaulted nationwide last year.

This is the real issue according to the International Association of Chiefs of Police. They blame the degradation of criminals and easier access to guns. They believe the criminals now believe they have nothing to lose by hurting or killing a police officer. St. Louis Police Chief Dan Isom discussed the problem on our special report.

A national group with a strong Missouri chapter is called COPS. Concerns of Police Survivors. It is made up of survivors of those officer [sic] killed in the line of duty. These families step in to help other families through the grief process. COPS also helps children of officers killed. Backstoppers is the financial backbone of these families as it steps in when an officer is killed and takes over the family’s bills. It is funded through donations.

DETROIT (AP) - A judge is refusing to let a young Detroit man withdraw his guilty plea to four slayings despite a confession from a hit man who's in prison for eight other murders.

The Tuesday decision is a major blow to Davontae Sanford, who says he admitted to the fatal shootings at age 14 to please police. He subsequently pleaded guilty to second-degree murder but has been fighting for more than three years to have the plea thrown out.

There's no dispute that admitted hit man Vincent Smothers told police he committed the 2007 Runyon Street homicides. But Wayne County Judge Brian Sullivan says Smothers' confession doesn't mean Sanford should be exonerated.
Smothers is willing to testify for Sanford, but the judge says no. Smothers [sic] now is 19.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Finally. After the seven-and-a-half week long Trayvon Martin Hoax, with every major media organ defaming George Zimmerman, someone at Reuters decided to do some real digging, instead of falsifying police recordings, police videos, and spreading lies scripted by the likes of Benjamin Crump, Al Sharpton, AOL/ Huffington Post’s Trymaine Lee and WFTV News’Daralene Jones.

Reuters reporter Chris Francescani dispels numerous lies. He tells us that George Zimmerman not only has mestizo, but black blood. Instead of having appointed himself neighborhood watch captain, Zimmerman’s neighbors asked him to take on the role. Instead of having gotten a gun license and purchased a gun, in order to hunt black males, he did so on the advice of an animal control officer, in order to protect his family and himself from a wild pit bull, whose owner was permitting to terrorize the neighborhood. But in recent years, as a black neighbor told Reuters, Zimmerman’s neighborhood was being terrorized by black male burglars. Not by burglars of all races and ethnicities, as Trayvon Martin’s supporters have asserted.

SANFORD, Florida (Reuters) - A pit bull named Big Boi began menacing George and Shellie Zimmerman in the fall of 2009.

The first time the dog ran free and cornered Shellie in their gated community in Sanford, Florida, George called the owner to complain. The second time, Big Boi frightened his mother-in-law's dog. Zimmerman called Seminole County Animal Services and bought pepper spray. The third time he saw the dog on the loose, he called again. An officer came to the house, county records show.

"Don't use pepper spray," he told the Zimmermans, according to a friend. "It'll take two or three seconds to take effect, but a quarter second for the dog to jump you," he said.

"Get a gun."

That November, the Zimmermans completed firearms training at a local lodge and received concealed-weapons gun permits. In early December, another source close to them told Reuters, the couple bought a pair of guns. George picked a Kel-Tec PF-9 9mm handgun, a popular, lightweight weapon.

By June 2011, Zimmerman's attention had shifted from a loose pit bull to a wave of robberies that rattled the community, called the Retreat at Twin Lakes. The homeowners association asked him to launch a neighborhood watch, and Zimmerman would begin to carry the Kel-Tec on his regular, dog-walking patrol - a violation of neighborhood watch guidelines but not a crime.

Few of his closest neighbors knew he carried a gun - until two months ago.

On February 26, George Zimmerman shot and killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in what Zimmerman says was self-defense. The furor that ensued has consumed the country and prompted a re-examination of guns, race and self-defense laws enacted in nearly half the United States.

During the time Zimmerman was in hiding, his detractors defined him as a vigilante who had decided Martin was suspicious merely because he was black. After Zimmerman was finally arrested on a charge of second-degree murder more than six weeks after the shooting, prosecutors portrayed him as a violent and angry man who disregarded authority by pursuing the 17-year-old.

But a more nuanced portrait of Zimmerman has emerged from a Reuters investigation into Zimmerman's past and a series of incidents in the community in the months preceding the Martin shooting.

Based on extensive interviews with relatives, friends, neighbors, schoolmates and co-workers of Zimmerman in two states, law enforcement officials, and reviews of court documents and police reports, the story sheds new light on the man at the center of one of the most controversial homicide cases in America.

The 28-year-old insurance-fraud investigator comes from a deeply Catholic background and was taught in his early years to do right by those less fortunate. He was raised in a racially integrated household and himself has black roots through an Afro-Peruvian great-grandfather - the father of the maternal grandmother who helped raise him.

A criminal justice student who aspired to become a judge, Zimmerman also concerned himself with the safety of his neighbors after a series of break-ins committed by young African-American men.

Though civil rights demonstrators have argued Zimmerman should not have prejudged Martin, one black neighbor of the Zimmermans said recent history should be taken into account.

"Let's talk about the elephant in the room. I'm black, OK?" the woman said, declining to be identified because she anticipated backlash due to her race. She leaned in to look a reporter directly in the eyes. "There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood," she said. "That's why George was suspicious of Trayvon Martin."

"MIXED" HOUSEHOLD

George Michael Zimmerman was born in 1983 to Robert and Gladys Zimmerman, the third of four children. Robert Zimmerman Sr. was a U.S. Army veteran who served in Vietnam in 1970, and was stationed at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, in 1975 with Gladys Mesa's brother George. Zimmerman Sr. also served two tours in Korea, and spent the final 10 years of his 22-year military career in the Pentagon, working for the Department of Defense, a family member said.

In his final years in Virginia before retiring to Florida, Robert Zimmerman served as a magistrate in Fairfax County's 19th Judicial District.

Robert and Gladys met in January 1975, when George Mesa brought along his army buddy to his sister's birthday party. She was visiting from Peru, on vacation from her job there as a physical education teacher. Robert was a Baptist, Gladys was Catholic. They soon married, in a Catholic ceremony in Alexandria, and moved to nearby Manassas.

Gladys came to lead a small but growing Catholic Hispanic enclave within the All Saints Catholic Church parish in the late 1970s, where she was involved in the church's outreach programs. Gladys would bring young George along with her on "home visits" to poor families, said a family friend, Teresa Post.

"It was part of their upbringing to know that there are people in need, people more in need than themselves," said Post, a Peruvian immigrant who lived with the Zimmermans for a time.

Post recalls evening prayers before dinner in the ethnically diverse Zimmerman household, which included siblings Robert Jr., Grace, and Dawn. "It wasn't only white or only Hispanic or only black - it was mixed," she said.

Zimmerman's maternal grandmother, Cristina, who had lived with the Zimmermans since 1978, worked as a babysitter for years during Zimmerman's childhood. For several years she cared for two African-American girls who ate their meals at the Zimmerman house and went back and forth to school each day with the Zimmerman children.

"They were part of the household for years, until they were old enough to be on their own," Post said.

Zimmerman served as an altar boy at All Saints from age 7 to 17, church members said.

"He wasn't the type where, you know, 'I'm being forced to do this,' and a dragging-his-feet Catholic," said Sandra Vega, who went to high school with George and his siblings. "He was an altar boy for years, and then worked in the rectory too. He has a really good heart."

George grew up bilingual, and by age 10 he was often called to the Haydon Elementary School principal's office to act as a translator between administrators and immigrant parents. At 14 he became obsessed with becoming a Marine, a relative said, joining the after-school ROTC program at Grace E. Metz Middle School and polishing his boots by night. At 15, he worked three part-time jobs - in a Mexican restaurant, for the rectory, and washing cars - on nights and weekends, to save up for a car.

After graduating from Osbourn High School in 2001, Zimmerman moved to Lake Mary, Florida, a town neighboring Sanford. His parents purchased a retirement home there in 2002, in part to bring Cristina, who suffers from arthritis, to a warmer climate.

YOUNG INSURANCE AGENT

On his own at 18, George got a job at an insurance agency and began to take classes at night to earn a license to sell insurance. He grew friendly with a real estate agent named Lee Ann Benjamin, who shared office space in the building, and later her husband, John Donnelly, a Sanford attorney.

"George impressed me right off the bat as just a real go-getter," Donnelly said. "He was working days and taking all these classes at night, passing all the insurance classes, not just for home insurance, but auto insurance and everything. He wanted to open his own office - and he did."

In 2004, Zimmerman partnered with an African-American friend and opened up an Allstate insurance satellite office, Donnelly said.

Then came 2005, and a series of troubles. Zimmerman's business failed, he was arrested, and he broke off an engagement with a woman who filed a restraining order against him.

That July, Zimmerman was charged with resisting arrest, violence, and battery of an officer after shoving an undercover alcohol-control agent who was arresting an under-age friend of Zimmerman's at a bar. He avoided conviction by agreeing to participate in a pre-trial diversion program that included anger-management classes.

In August, Zimmerman's fiancee at the time, Veronica Zuazo, filed a civil motion for a restraining order alleging domestic violence. Zimmerman reciprocated with his own order on the same grounds, and both orders were granted. The relationship ended.

In 2007 he married Shellie Dean, a licensed cosmetologist, and in 2009 the couple rented a townhouse in the Retreat at Twin Lakes. Zimmerman had bounced from job to job for a couple of years, working at a car dealership and a mortgage company. At times, according to testimony from Shellie at a bond hearing for Zimmerman last week, the couple filed for unemployment benefits.

Zimmerman enrolled in Seminole State College in 2009, and in December 2011 he was permitted to participate in a school graduation ceremony, despite being a course credit shy of his associate's degree in criminal justice. Zimmerman was completing that course credit when the shooting occurred.

On March 22, nearly a month after the shooting and with the controversy by then swirling nationwide, the school issued a press release saying it was taking the "unusual, but necessary" step of withdrawing Zimmerman's enrollment, citing "the safety of our students on campus as well as for Mr. Zimmerman."

A NEIGHBORHOOD IN FEAR

By the summer of 2011, Twin Lakes was experiencing a rash of burglaries and break-ins. Previously a family-friendly, first-time homeowner community, it was devastated by the recession that hit the Florida housing market, and transient renters began to occupy some of the 263 town houses in the complex. Vandalism and occasional drug activity were reported, and home values plunged. One resident who bought his home in 2006 for $250,000 said it was worth $80,000 today.

At least eight burglaries were reported within Twin Lakes in the 14 months prior to the Trayvon Martin shooting, according to the Sanford Police Department. Yet in a series of interviews, Twin Lakes residents said dozens of reports of attempted break-ins and would-be burglars casing homes had created an atmosphere of growing fear in the neighborhood.

In several of the incidents, witnesses identified the suspects to police as young black men. Twin Lakes is about 50 percent white, with an African-American and Hispanic population of about 20 percent each, roughly similar to the surrounding city of Sanford, according to U.S. Census data.

One morning in July 2011, a black teenager walked up to Zimmerman's front porch and stole a bicycle, neighbors told Reuters. A police report was taken, though the bicycle was not recovered.

But it was the August incursion into the home of Olivia Bertalan that really troubled the neighborhood, particularly Zimmerman. Shellie was home most days, taking online courses towards certification as a registered nurse.

On August 3, Bertalan was at home with her infant son while her husband, Michael, was at work. She watched from a downstairs window, she said, as two black men repeatedly rang her doorbell and then entered through a sliding door at the back of the house. She ran upstairs, locked herself inside the boy's bedroom, and called a police dispatcher, whispering frantically.

"I said, 'What am I supposed to do? I hear them coming up the stairs!'" she told Reuters. Bertalan tried to coo her crying child into silence and armed herself with a pair of rusty scissors.

Police arrived just as the burglars - who had been trying to disconnect the couple's television - fled out a back door. Shellie Zimmerman saw a black male teen running through her backyard and reported it to police.

After police left Bertalan, George Zimmerman arrived at the front door in a shirt and tie, she said. He gave her his contact numbers on an index card and invited her to visit his wife if she ever felt unsafe. He returned later and gave her a stronger lock to bolster the sliding door that had been forced open.

"He was so mellow and calm, very helpful and very, very sweet," she said last week. "We didn't really know George at first, but after the break-in we talked to him on a daily basis. People were freaked out. It wasn't just George calling police ... we were calling police at least once a week."

In September, a group of neighbors including Zimmerman approached the homeowners association with their concerns, she said. Zimmerman was asked to head up a new neighborhood watch. He agreed.

"PLEASE CONTACT OUR CAPTAIN"

Police had advised Bertalan to get a dog. She and her husband decided to move out instead, and left two days before the shooting. Zimmerman took the advice.

"He'd already had a mutt that he walked around the neighborhood every night - man, he loved that dog - but after that home invasion he also got a Rottweiler," said Jorge Rodriguez, a friend and neighbor of the Zimmermans.

Around the same time, Zimmerman also gave Rodriguez and his wife, Audria, his contact information, so they could reach him day or night. Rodriguez showed the index card to Reuters. In neat cursive was a list of George and Shellie's home number and cell phones, as well as their emails.

Less than two weeks later, another Twin Lakes home was burglarized, police reports show. Two weeks after that, a home under construction was vandalized.

The Retreat at Twin Lakes e-newsletter for February 2012 noted: "The Sanford PD has announced an increased patrol within our neighborhood ... during peak crime hours.

"If you've been a victim of a crime in the community, after calling police, please contact our captain, George Zimmerman."

EMMANUEL BURGESS - SETTING THE STAGE

On February 2, 2012, Zimmerman placed a call to Sanford police after spotting a young black man he recognized peering into the windows of a neighbor's empty home, according to several friends and neighbors.

"I don't know what he's doing. I don't want to approach him, personally," Zimmerman said in the call, which was recorded. The dispatcher advised him that a patrol car was on the way. By the time police arrived, according to the dispatch report, the suspect had fled.

On February 6, the home of another Twin Lakes resident, Tatiana Demeacis, was burglarized. Two roofers working directly across the street said they saw two African-American men lingering in the yard at the time of the break-in. A new laptop and some gold jewelry were stolen. One of the roofers called police the next day after spotting one of the suspects among a group of male teenagers, three black and one white, on bicycles.

Police found Demeacis's laptop in the backpack of 18-year-old Emmanuel Burgess, police reports show, and charged him with dealing in stolen property. Burgess was the same man Zimmerman had spotted on February 2.

Burgess had committed a series of burglaries on the other side of town in 2008 and 2009, pleaded guilty to several, and spent all of 2010 incarcerated in a juvenile facility, his attorney said. He is now in jail on parole violations.

Three days after Burgess was arrested, Zimmerman's grandmother was hospitalized for an infection, and the following week his father was also admitted for a heart condition. Zimmerman spent a number of those nights on a hospital room couch.

Ten days after his father was hospitalized, Zimmerman noticed another young man in the neighborhood, acting in a way he found familiar, so he made another call to police.

"We've had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there's a real suspicious guy," Zimmerman said, as Trayvon Martin returned home from the store.

The last time Zimmerman had called police, to report Burgess, he followed protocol and waited for police to arrive. They were too late, and Burgess got away.

This time, Zimmerman was not so patient, and he disregarded police advice against pursuing Martin.

"These assholes," he muttered in an aside, "they always get away."

After the phone call ended, several minutes passed when the movements of Zimmerman and Martin remain a mystery.

HOUSTON – Crime Stoppers is searching for two men accused of setting a Houston bar on fire after barricading patrons inside.

It happened on April 19 after the two men were removed from a bar located in the 8000 block of Harrisburg, investigators said.

After the bar’s staff removed the two men, the suspects approached the front door, closed the burglar bars and barricaded the door with a large piece of wood.

Surveillance video shows the men moving to the back of the business and pouring gasoline around the back exit, before igniting it.

The bar’s patrons were able to safely evacuate through a third exit that wasn’t barricaded.

No injuries were reported.

One suspect was identified as Jaime Mata. Mata was charged with felony arson and a warrant has been issued for his arrest.

The second suspect has not been identified, but police said he uses the alias “Pepe.” On the night of the fire he wore blue shorts with no shirt and displayed a number of distinctive tattoos.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Crime Stoppers of Houston at 713-222-TIPS. Tips can also be submitted online at www.crime-stoppers.org or sent by text message. Just text TIP610 plus your tip to CRIMES (274637). All tipsters remain anonymous.

Crime Stoppers will pay up to $5,000 for any information that leads to the filing of felony charges or the arrest of the suspects in the case.

About Me

I am a dissident journalist, whose work has been published in dozens of daily newspapers, magazines, and journals in English, German, and Swedish, under my own name and many pseudonyms. While living in internal exile in New York, where I am whitelisted, I maintain NSU/The Wyatt Earp Journalism Bureau and some eight other blogs (some are distinctive but occasional venues, while others are mirrors), and also write for stout-hearted men such as Peter Brimelow and Jared Taylor. Please hit the “Donate” button on your way out. Thanks, in advance.
Follow my tweets at @NicholasStix.

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